MONITORING MEIOBENTHOS USING CM-SCALE, M-SCALE AND KM-SCALE IN THE SOUTHERN BIGHT OF THE NORTH-SEA

Meiobenthos at the mouth of the Grevelingen and Oosterschelde Estuarie s in the Southern Eight of the North Sea was monitored using meiobenth ic abundance and nematode community structure. Hierarchical sampling i ncluded 54 subsamples nested within 18 cores within six stations withi n two transects. The spatial patterns of the meiofaunal populations an d communities are presented in cm-scale (among subsamples), m-scale (a mong cores), km-scale (among stations) and IO km-scale (between transe cts). The variance components analysis of meiofaunal abundances showed that km-scale and 10 km-scale represented 63-90% of total variance wh ile m-scale and cm-scale provided only 10-37%. Different communities w ere found among stations rather than among cores or subsamples by detr ended correspondence analysis ordination and clustering analysis. The main assemblage of meiofauna occurred at the km-scale. Nematode divers ity was more powerful than meiofaunal abundance in detecting spatial v ariation at all scales. However, at least two replicates are required for monitoring when sampling using a 10 cm(2) subsampling core. Copyri ght (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.